Issue 18

October 1998

To finish first, you have to work fast. Ray Evernham - NASCAR's top crew chief and the man behind race-car champ Jeff Gordon - offers lessons from the pit on teamwork, surprise, and the pursuit of perfection.

Why are our generation's smartest, most talented, most successful people flirting with disaster in record numbers? What is destroying the best and the brightest at the very moment when they can have it all?

The last two years at Intuit have brought tumultuous, deep-seated changes. But in periods of transformation, what stays the same? "Values," says Scott Cook. "The best companies stand for something. In our case, it is to do right by the customer."

In 1993, Intuit identified a set of values that describes how it operates and what makes it different. Lots of companies have values statements, of course. But few are as plain-spoken or heartfelt as Intuit's. Here are excerpts from its 10 core values.

It's the gaming office to end all gaming offices, a space filled with monsters and other creatures of the night. Some of those creatures - game designers - all but live there. In fact, At Ion Storm, work is a game.

People are reaching the top, using all of their means to get money, power, and glory - and then self-destructing. Perhaps they wanted success in the first place or didn't like what they saw when they finally achieved it.

Wanted

Skullcandy used to be a fashion statement—although that statement seemed to say "I'm a loud teenager!" This headphone mainstay was flashy and heavy on neon. But in the past few years, consumers have been drawn to high-end competitors with signature sounds (such as the bass-heavy Beats by Dr. Dre), and Skullcandy realized its product was all show. So it built an in-house engineering team—previously, all this work was farmed out—to maximize airflow and enrich the audio.